


you can't have peace without a war

by defcontwo



Category: Hawkeye (Comics)
Genre: Bisexual Kate Bishop, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:53:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2800268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been four months, six days and twelve hours since she last held a bow in her hand and her fingers ache with the absence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can't have peace without a war

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stitchingatthecircuitboard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchingatthecircuitboard/gifts).



> Happy Holidays! And a very Merry Kate Bishop-Mas to you.

**MAGNETO IN CUSTODY AGAIN BUT WILL IT LAST? THE AVENGERS TO MAKE A STATEMENT SOON.**

The bold white letters crawl across the bottom of the TV as MNN’s favorite reporter walks across the floor of the situation room. A holographic display of Magneto and all of the current active Avengers takes up the entire screen that serves as most of the back wall. In it, Hawkeye is wrinkling his nose, lips down-turned into a grimace, but the screen’s frozen his face so it’s impossible to know what comes next, to know whether he ever smiled again or if he got trapped in that moment, doomed to grace their TV screens in an eternal frown. 

She's got a thrice-folded over piece of paper with his latest address sitting in her bedside drawer. She keeps meaning to throw it out, telling herself that she has no use for it now. He's Hawkeye; she's not. It's as simple as that.

Still, though. She wonders what had happened to make him make that face; was this garden variety Maximoff drama or did Magneto do something really serious this time? 

Is there such a thing as garden variety Maximoff drama or does it always end in hurt, in tears, in death, but somehow, never their own?

The reporter, with his three piece suit firmly in place and his white beard neatly groomed, opens his mouth probably to tell her exactly that. 

Kate raises the remote in her hand to click off the television and walk away.

It is an unkind thought to have, maybe, and she's suddenly, foolishly glad that she doesn't know any telepaths. Kate knows that Billy has only ever wanted to do what's right, in the end, and that he can barely get out of bed most days for the guilt. And Tommy -- Tommy, despite all his best efforts, doesn't have an insincere bone in his entire body.

There's a saying about apples and trees but the roots don't always have to be rotten all the way through.

Kate stands there, remote dangling loosely from one hand, and watches the two hour report in its entirety.

~

Four months, six days and twelve hours.

That’s how long it’s been since Kate quit being a Young Avenger. 

That’s how long it’s been since Cassie died. 

Four months, six days and twelve hours later and Kate still doesn’t have a better plan for what to do next. 

Most days, she is honest with herself enough to know that there’s no plan for things like this. There is no plan for what comes after watching your best friend die right in front of you, no plan for what happens after you have to stand by the graveside of the most important person in your life and hold it all together while her father sobs huge, gasping, world-altering sobs into your shoulder, ruining the heavy wool of your favorite coat. 

There’s no plan but there’s an itching deep down in her bones that says she can’t do this forever; she can’t remain in stasis, can’t continue to haunt her father’s penthouse like a ghost, as the weight of this nothingness presses down on her more and more with each passing day. 

Kate wants to do something, wants to be something; it’s been a long, long time since she’s really wanted anything at all that wasn’t just Cassie, alive and well and whole, and just the thought of it, shapeless and unclear but still so sure, is enough to make her spine straighten with purpose. 

It’s been four months, six days and twelve hours since she last held a bow in her hand and her fingers ache with the absence.

~

Kate wakes to the sound of her favorite glow-in-the-dark lamp toppling over, knocking books off the bureau, followed quickly by an “oh shit fuck, damnit, that wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Kate sits up, propping her elbows against her pillow. “Tommy, what the hell?” 

Tommy looks up at her, the glow-in-the-dark lamp in one hand and the stuffed pig that her uncle gave her when she was five in the other, eyes wide and expression a little sheepish, like he didn't really think this whole breaking-into-her-room thing all the way through. Probably, he didn't. The stuffed pig is faded and raggedy; there’s a loose thread hanging from its front left hoof that she keeps meaning to fix. 

Tommy and the pig make a fine pair, if she’s being honest. The thought makes her snort with laughter. Tommy’s shoulders droop, even as he glares. “Shut up, Kate.” 

“Thought you were supposed to be graceful, Speed.” 

“Thought you weren’t using those names anymore, Hawkeye.” 

“I’m not,” Kate says. She looks him up and down, dragging her eyes from head to shoulders and back again, huffing at the expected eyebrow waggle that she got in return. The green spandex has always been a good look on him, for all that it should be absurd. 

But that’s just Tommy all over, isn’t it. 

“But you are, aren’t you?” Kate presses.

Tommy shrugs, dropping the lamp and the stuffed animal to the bureau with a thump. “M’trying it on again for size, I guess.” 

He’s lying. Out of all of them, Tommy is the only one who never stopped. Who never, ever could. 

Four months ago, it’d seemed crazy to her, that Tommy could wake up every morning and know that donning that ridiculous, green spandex and going off to be a superhero, that was exactly the right thing for him to do. 

Now, Kate looks up at him and sees the blood dotting his forehead, sees the tired grin lurking around the edges of his lips. Tommy’s shoulders are loose, not tight and hunched down like they so often were before, when he was new and hurt and quick to temper. 

He looks okay. He looks happy. 

“I’m thinking -- “ Kate starts, but then snaps her mouth shut just as fast. She doesn’t know how to make the words form in her throat just yet. 

She almost got them out, though. 

That’s a hell of a step. 

Tommy smiles at her, small and soft, almost like he suspects what she was trying to say. “Mind if I crash here for the night, rich girl? No funny business, cross my heart, unless you want funny business, in which case….” Tommy trails off, waggling his eyebrows again. 

Kate throws a pillow at him that he dodges with ease. Super speedy jerkface. 

“No funny business,” Kate says. “But yeah, alright, I guess you can say.” 

Tommy shrugs out of his spandex, stripping down to his briefs, and tugs on a shirt from her drawer that she’s pretty sure belongs to Eli, before sliding into bed, tucking the pillow that she threw at him under his head. 

“You gonna tell me a bedtime story, Kate?” 

Kate reaches to flick the light off. “Don’t make me kick you out of bed, Shepherd.” 

It takes hours for Kate to fall asleep again but when she finally does, it’s to the steady, even rhythm of Tommy’s breathing. 

He’s alive. She’s alive. It’s a good thing to remind herself of.

~

“Whatever happened to that boy you were seeing, Kate?”

Kate looks up, startled. Her fork clinks against the porcelain plate sharply, ringing sharp and high in the stillness of the dining room. 

Susan just raises an expectant eyebrow, even as her husband, Logan, leans back in his seat, a disapproving scowl set deep in his face. It wasn’t Logan’s idea to invite Kate to dinner; even if she didn’t know it already going in, the petulance that’s hung around him all evening spells it out pretty clearly. 

He’s never liked her, Kate knows. 

That’s alright. She’s never liked him much either. 

Kate fiddles with the fork and it makes a soft, pointed clink against the plate. “He, uh. He moved to Arizona for school. Library science and uh, poli-sci, I think.” 

Logan scoffs. “Library science? Well. I guess it’s better than doing nothing.” 

“Eli wants to help people,” Kate says, bristling, and this is getting out of control again, she knows, just like it has so many times before. She’d promised Susan that she’d try harder this time but this, this is not like all of those other times. It’s not about the months she spent as a creature of grief and finely honed, directionless rage and little else. Kate’s doing better, now, for all that she can’t get her family to see it. 

This? This is because Logan is a fucking asshole. He can patronize her all he wants but who the hell is he to look down at Eli? 

“That’s all he’s ever wanted to do. Tell me, what is it you do again, Logan? Investment banking?” 

Susan sighs, placing a hand over her eyes. She doesn’t even bother to say anything. She doesn’t have to. 

Kate gets up from the table and lets herself out.

~

“I fucked up dinner with Susan,” Kate says, letting out a gusty sigh that comes back to her as static noise through the receiver.

“What, again?” Eli’s voice feels warm and close, for all that sometimes it feels like he couldn’t be further away. 

“Is it my fault my sister married an asshole?” 

Eli huffs a laugh. “Alright, what was it this time?” 

Kate opens her mouth and then freezes, a warm flush of shame crawling up the back of her neck. There’s no good way to tell him that it was about him; her stomach churns with the guilt of it, with the crystal clear image of Logan’s disdain still so near in her memory. 

“Just boring rich people stuff,” Kate lies. “You know how it is.” 

“Oh, _do_ I?” Eli says, laughing. “Whatever, okay, Milady Bishop.” 

“I don’t want to talk about me anymore,” Kate says. “Let’s talk about you, what’ve you been up to, Mister Smarty-Pants College Boy?” 

“You know, you could go to college if you wanted to, Kate,” Eli says, and he’s right, of course, because she’s got a handful of references and a completed Columbia application sitting in her drawer but she can’t seem to bring herself to mail it in just yet. Every time she almost does, something comes up -- either a blizzard that closes down the post office or a supervillain who makes it their mission to wipe out every mailbox in downtown Manhattan and it feels a little like the universe is trying to send her a sign. 

That it’s not the right time just yet, that something is waiting for her just around the corner and she just has to let herself get there. 

She pretends that she doesn’t know what that something is just yet. It’s a little white lie that she likes to tell herself; it makes it a little easier to repeat it thrice over to Eli. 

Kate clears her throat pointedly. “We were talking about _you_ , college boy.” 

“Did I tell you I’ve started volunteering with the ACLU here?” Eli says, and she knows that tone as well as anything, knows the way it rises with purpose. It’s the tone that Eli uses when he’s gone full Captain America and he doesn’t even know it. Kate smiles, bright and wide, at the sound of it. 

“No,” Kate says, “but I think you should tell me all about it.” 

So he does.

~

No human being is meant to exist in the same space as their high school classmates after graduation. Kate’s pretty sure that that’s a rule and if it’s not, it really fucking well should be.

And yet here she is, in a seven hundred dollar dress that her sister insisted on and five inch heels, about to wade into a room filled to the brim with New York socialites that she hasn’t seen in at least a year and a half. 

A lot can happen in a year and a half. 

A lot _has_ happened in a year and a half but she doesn’t know if she can stomach it, pretending to care about the night ahead filled with chatter about gap years and the French Riviera. She’s trying, here, trying so hard to be normal or at least her best, new approximation of it because agreeing to this charity event was the only apology Susan would really accept. Kate's starting to get the feeling that it was more because Susan knew that she’d hate this event than anything else. 

Fuck the French Riviera, quite frankly. 

Kate grabs a flute of champagne off of a passing tray and downs it in one go. 

There’s a low whistle behind her. 

“Hey, you know you might want to slow down, Bishop.” 

Kate sets the flute down and whirls around, and there’s a snarl on the tip of her tongue already, quick to rise but also just as quick to die because the girl standing there is one of the few people from her high school that she ever really liked. She used to sit behind Kate in English and they weren't friends, exactly, but they were friendly. Even if Kate can't remember the other girl's name for the life of her. 

The girl runs a hand through her closely cropped, choppy black hair, giving Kate a lopsided smile. “You can’t remember my name, can you?” 

“I remember that you hated Vladimir Nabokov?” Kate says, voice rising in uncertainty. It figures that’s the one, tiny unimportant detail that her brain caught onto but this girl was the only one who’d agreed with Kate and they made their argument more than once, consistently and vehemently, over the course of senior year AP Lit. 

The girl’s hair didn’t used to be this short, Kate realizes suddenly. It’s a good look on her; striking might be a better way to put it, but it’d probably be weird of Kate to say so now that she’s just gone and admitted that she doesn’t even remember this girl’s name. 

“I do,” the girl says, “You got me, I do, I fucking hate Vladimir Nabokov. It’s Kumiko, by the way,” she says, holding out a slim hand for Kate to shake, “and don’t worry, I’ll try not to hold it against you. It’s not like you really hung around school that much anyways.” 

Kate shakes Kumiko’s hand, lips crinkling downwards into a small frown. It’s strange but she’s never really thought about that before, how her life must’ve looked to the people who saw her day in and day out but never knew where she went to once the bell rang, never knew who she really was at all. 

It was as if she’d found this huge, life-altering path that she didn’t even know she’d been looking for all along and a flip switched. One minute, she was just a teenaged girl at a wedding and the next minute, she was an Avenger; everything else was an afterthought. 

“Maybe I should have. Um.” Kate licks her lips, the back of her throat suddenly dry. She blames the champagne. “Maybe I should have hung around school more, I guess.” 

Kumiko shrugs. “I don’t know. Always seemed like you had something better to do. Nothing wrong with that.” 

Something better to do? Put it like that and somehow, it sounds too little. There aren't enough words in the English language to describe what being a Young Avenger was to Kate. How could sticking around a little more after school for theater club compare to saving lives? How could it compare to fighting aliens and seeing the sort of strange, impossible things that her classmates could only ever learn about on the news?

How could it compare to the rush she got every time an arrow hit its target dead on?

Short answer: it couldn't.

Kate shakes her head. “So, what’ve you been up to? Are you in college….or?”

“Or, what? Have I been taking in the fine culture at Ibiza?” Kumiko says, making a show of rolling her eyes. 

Kate snorts. “Ibiza? How gauche.” 

Kumiko leans in real close, making as if to whisper into Kate’s ear. “Our high school _sucked_.” 

Kate leans right back. “So does this party.” 

Kumiko is close enough that Kate can smell her lavender shampoo, can feel the heavy, glitzy material of Kumiko’s golden cocktail dress brushing against her arm, and her smile is bright and wide and something about all of this is a little bit dizzying, for all that Kate can’t really put her finger on why, but all she knows is this: she’s gonna go with it. 

Man, her sister is going to _kill_ her. 

“Wanna grab a bottle of wine and get out of here?” 

Kumiko nudges Kate in the shoulder. “I thought you’d never ask.” 

Kumiko tucks a bottle of chardonnay under her arm and takes hold of Kate’s hand with her other arm. Kate tangles their fingers together on a whim, warm palm pressed to warm palm, and takes the lead, winding them throughout the back catering tables out a side door where they run up the stairwell at breakneck speed, heels be damned, and burst out onto the hotel rooftop like they were chased the whole way up. 

They tuck themselves into a corner on the hard, cold cement, placing the wine bottle between them. 

“So, Kumiko who hates Nabokov, what _have_ you been up to?” 

“I’m just starting my sophomore year at Berkeley, actually,” Kumiko says. 

“Yeah?” Kate says. “You like it?” 

There’s no other way to put it: Kumiko lights up. 

They talk for hours --- about Berkeley and accents on the West Coast, about gender studies and take back the night events, and Kate’s still pretty sure that college isn’t gonna be for her, but it’s easy to listen to Kumiko go on and on about this whole other life that she has on the other side of the country. There's something reassuring about the fact that Kumiko has this fully realized world thousands of miles away, one that is so different from their high school years, and Kate feels strangely touched that Kumiko's decided to share it with her. It's a casual sort of intimacy, how Kate's been given this night to reach in and peek into someone else's life and it’s pure instinct, really, that has Kate leaning over across the scant distance and pressing her lips to Kumiko’s. 

“I’m sorry,” Kate says, stuttering as she pulls away. “I think I’ve had too much to drink.” 

It’s a bad lie; they haven’t even touched the bottle that they brought all the way out here and it’s been hours and hours now since that one glass of champagne but Kate takes it and runs, bypassing any lingering guests in the hallways of the hotel and hopping a cab all the way home. 

It’s not until she’s home and locked in her room, fancy dress abandoned on the floor, one hand braced on the headboard and the other sneaking down beneath the hem of her panties, her mind filled with the sharp, clear sense memory of Kumiko’s shampoo, of the softness of her lips against Kate’s, that Kate lets herself think that maybe it’s time she stop pretending that she has any idea where her life is headed.

~

Kate tugs the thin material of her leather jacket close to her as the wind blows right through her crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. She doesn’t really have a destination, here. She just knows that she needs to get out of Manhattan for a bit, needs to stop turning around and expecting to see familiar faces that she isn’t ready to answer to just yet.

Kate’s been walking for over an hour, aimlessly, when she sees him. She turns a corner and there he is, just on the edge of an alleyway. 

It’s a dog, a mutt. He’s a little on the big side and missing an ear and he is, unmistakably, alone and hungry and without a home. 

Kate drops into a crouch, holding out a hand. “Hey, buddy.”

The dog comes a few steps closer to her before backing up just as quickly. He cocks his head to one side, taking in the measure of her for a beat and then another and then he steps closer, leaning forward to sniff at her hand. 

“How much would my father kill me if I brought you home with me today?” Kate says, grinning at the lopsided face the dog makes as she scratches behind his good ear. “I think maybe a lot.” 

The dog doesn’t seem to care; he curls in closer to her, burrowing his snout into the space between her arm and her jeans. 

“Hey, how about a name? I was thinking -- “ 

A car backfires and the dog startles. Kate stumbles as she leaps up from the crouch but it’s too late; the dog has already taken off and he has a head start on her. Kate takes off running but the boots she tugged on this morning aren’t right for this kind of running, and the slick, icy pavement cracks and slides beneath her feet. 

Kate turns another corner but the dog is gone, and she’s left standing in the middle of the street, wondering if maybe she’d hallucinated the whole thing. 

“Hey, lady, you mind getting out of the way?” 

Kate whirls around and sure enough, she’s standing stock still right in front of the entrance to the Franklin Av subway stop. 

“Huh,” Kate says. “Bed-Stuy, who knew?” 

And maybe it’s a little hokey, a little ridiculous, but Kate knows she can’t ignore the signs. This, right here, is the moment she’s been waiting for.

~

The door makes a satisfying thump, thump, thump sound as her fist bangs on it. She hears a crash and then a curse and then the door swings wide open, revealing a sleepy, rumpled-looking Clint Barton.

There are lines creased into the side of his face, like he'd just been laying on top of a pillow in an odd position, and there are dark circles forming two rings under his eyes. She hasn't seen him in half a year, almost, and some part of her forgot that he's a real person, that he's like her, and not just a grimacing holographic figure on the television. 

It's funny, how he doesn't really seem all that surprised to see her.

“Kate? What is it, do you need help up with something?” Clint asks. 

Kate beams up at him and it's a good feeling, the way her mind clears until it is narrowed down to one, focused point.

“I want to work with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> \+ Thank you thank you thank you to A + C, this fic would not exist as it stands today without either of you.  
> \+ The timeline between the end of Children's Crusade and the beginning of Hawkeye is a little murky so I tried to make an educated guess and hope for the best.  
> \+ I know that Clint was not actually eligible for this year but he's only in the story for like, a hot minute, so I hope that's okay?!  
> \+ Author accidentally names OCs after Murakami characters and doesn't even realize it until the whole thing is done, whoops.   
> \+ Happy holidays, dear Yuletiders!


End file.
